Defining Ireland’s political system

Government Buildings - Dublin

Despite the blanket coverage of politics in the Irish media, very few people have any real grasp of how politics actually works in Ireland. So what is our political system? Perhaps we could compare it to our economic system, something that Irish people have a much better understanding of. In fact the political system is all about power. The currency of politics is power just as the currency of economics is money.

While many people like to think that they are not part of the political system, to a greater or lesser extent they are. Politics is not just a small group of politicians sitting up in Leinster House making grand pronouncements on the telly. Nor is it the hyped up election count where winners are hoisted in the air to a cacophony of cheers and losers are depicted with grim faces tearing up pieces of paper. It is in fact the sum total of all human interaction.

The wielding of power happens at all levels of our society. There are power structures in every local school and sports club. There are power structures in families, in institutions, in companies and in all human relationships. The balance of power is constantly shifting as people interact with each other. This is quite comparable with economic interaction where wealth is affected as money changes hands. The difference with power is that it is much more complex and not easily measured.

Politics does affect our daily lives. Decisions and rules are put in place by all sorts of institutions most notably the Government, the EU and local councils. However, banks, businesses, courts, colleges, clubs, museums etc. all make rules that affect people.  Most of them are not very effective as people are ingenious in how they break them or get around them. Many of the laws that Government brings in are not enacted and an even greater number are not enforced.  People just do not have time to resort to the legal system to resolve every single dispute. If they did the legal system would soon grind to a halt.

In Ireland the wielding of power is now very unclear. Low level political interactions are not the problem. The problem lies with governance. Local authorities are dysfunctional. They are now effectively the local agents of national government or merely a vehicle for providing local services. At local level, the balance of power lies with the paid officials and not with the elected councillors. This is not the case at national level where real decisions can be made. However the civil service does most of the real work and decision making because Ministers tend to be tied up with far too much constituency work. Much of the progressive decision making in Ireland in recent years has been put in place by the European Union but this is now grinding to a halt as the EU is getting strangled by bureaucracy and financial worries.

 In short the system we have is hugely imperfect but it sort of works after a fashion. The big problem with our system overall is that it encompasses very little long term or strategic planning and what does exist is usually tokenistic or ineffective. Yes there are those who plan for the longer term, most notably businesses. However, in the system of Governance that we have, short term thinking or political myopia is predominant. The purpose of this blog is to explore ways in which we can bring a greater level of effective long term planning into the Irish political system.